[Baypiggies] considering starting a Open Source collective

[Paul McNett]

I love the Collective idea. I've been an independent consultant in the South Bay for 
over 9 years now, and have frequently longed for having extra resources at my 
disposal, such as someone else to answer the phone and do triage on phone and email, 
set up appointments, and basically keep me on schedule.

As a single independent consultant, I've never wanted to take on the cost of hiring 
such an administrative person and training them, but a Collective could share the 
cost of such a person equally. Or, each member of the Collective could put in a 
certain amount of time covering the office stuff each week.

The specialties of each member should complement one another as much as possible, and 
client lists should be shared as much as is practical. The Collective should use the 
same technologies for time, billing, and accounting and perhaps even present a 
unified invoice to the customer.

Perhaps I'm really talking about more of a formal partnership, instead of a loose 
collective.

Paul